Books, cats and fine wine are the best things in life.

Facebook

Thursday, January 16, 2014

#Author D.P. Denman Shares Her #WriteTip on Procrastination Demons @DPDenman

10:30 AM Posted by Unknown , , , 1 comment
Beware the Procrastination Demons 
by D.P. Denman 
I have a confession. I have a nasty habit of procrastinating when it comes to things I don’t want to do. I'm not the type to dive in and get them out of the way. I like to whine about it for a while first. That attitude definitely applies when the task in question is intimidating.
I recently completed my Bachelor's degree after a long hiatus from school. Because of my work schedule going to class on a traditional campus wasn't an option so I did the whole thing online. For those of you unfamiliar with online degrees they require an incredible amount of writing. I had a paper due once a week every week for three years. That's a lot of writing (and research) about things in which I didn't have any particular interest. As you can imagine that left ample opportunity for procrastination. I saw classmate after classmate fall prey to that same temptation completing their section of group projects at eleven o'clock on the night it was due and stressing out the entire group in the process. I also saw a lot of classmates fail out of the program because they couldn't overcome the habit.
During those three years, I learned how to short circuit procrastination out of sheer necessity, especially when it comes to intimidating projects. I stopped looking at the projects in their entirety and broke them into pieces instead. Researching and writing a ten-page paper that covered assigned aspects of a dreadfully boring topic is enough to make anyone want to hide under the covers.  Instead, I gave myself daily assignments. Each day I researched a different aspect of the topic. The last two days before the paper was due I gathered my research and wrote one section at a time focusing on a single and taking breaks to goof off in between. It worked much better than waiting until the day before the paper was due and spending twelve hours chained to my computer hating every minute of it.
Some people thrive on stress and prefer to wait until the last minute. I tried that for a while until I got tired of having to devote every weekend to finishing papers that were due Monday morning. Tackling one piece at a time got the job done without all the stress and without me having to sacrifice all my free time to do it.
Working all the time leads to burnout. Playing all the time leads to failure. The key is finding the balance somewhere in between.
DancersHeart
Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre -  MM Contemporary Romance
Rating – R
More details about the author and the book
 Connect with DP Denman on Facebook & Twitter

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for having me on your site, James! I appreciate it.

    ReplyDelete

Followers

Blog Archive